An Irish doctor has warned about misleading information in the public domain about the CervicalCheck scandal.

President of the Medical Council, Dr Rita Doyle, issued a statement today expressing her concern at the levels of inaccurate information.

She said: “The Medical Council, in its role in protecting patients and supporting doctors, is very concerned at some of the inaccurate information that is in the public domain following the recent difficulties discovered with CervicalCheck.

“The CervicalCheck programme has decreased the mortality rate by 7% year on year since its inception, thus reducing the number of women who die from cervical cancer.

“Women should be encouraged to take part in the screening process in the full knowledge that it is a screening test and not a diagnostic one.

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A recent article claimed the backlog in labs could lead to smear tests not being read and expiring and Dr Doyle said delays are not acceptable.

“I am aware of reports of a recent development of a bottleneck in the analysis of Cervical Smears, whereby smears are not analysed in a timely fashion, thus forcing the woman to re-attend and the doctor to repeat the smear.

“This is unacceptable to both patients and doctors.

“This could have the potential to have a further negative impact on the publics confidence in screening services which would be very concerning.”